Sunday, May 13, 2007

The walls of a men's room are never good reading, especially when the message is:

"Never hire a beaner to do a white man's job."

Sacramento State President Alexander Gonzalez was the target of this vulgarity, which was discovered in late April scrawled near a Sequoia Hall toilet, and came to light last week in the campus newspaper.

Penned with black markers, the sentiment exemplifies the dark side of a caustic climate afflicting Sacramento's public university.

How caustic? When a call for comment went out to the chancellor of the California State University system last week, Charles Reed called back in minutes.

"That is totally uncalled for on a university campus," he said.

No one is saying there's a link between the racist graffiti smeared in anonymity in a Sac State bathroom and the professors on campus at odds with Gonzalez. Those Gonzalez opponents -- 77 percent of the faculty members who participated in a referendum -- went very public on April 27 with a vote of "no confidence."

"It was not about Alexander Gonzalez the man," Juanita Barrena, a professor of biological sciences and campus fixture since 1975, said of the vote.

"It's about what's happening inside the university."

Put more bluntly, it's about power.+++++++Note: Breton claims he is not linking the graffiti to the conflict with Gonzalez; but of course that is exactly what he did. He printed graffitti as is it was news. What a strange choice.